I can't get the taste of wood fired cooking

[Ramiro]

I've cooked pizza several times using my brick oven and also using a steel oven, but I really don't taste any difference between the two pizzas...why??
Any tips?

Thanks!

[nissanneill]

Re: I can't get the taste of wood fired cooking

Hi Ramiro,
the pizzas cooked on the hearth of a wood fired oven definitely tastes different than the electrically heated conveyor cooked commercial pizzas.
I use eucalypt, river red gum to burn and this gives a taste to the pizza, especially when it is burning rather than well converted to red coals.
I normally get the oven to close to 500?C and the whole of the dome is white with little or no black soot.
I keep the fire well burning, spreading it over the entire floor to spread the heat and after moving it to the side and sweeping the hearth only, I put on a couple of extra logs (around 3-4" in diameter- split wood rather than logs) which instantly start to burn furiouslyand cook close to the coals/fire in around 1 to 2 minutes.
I also use the FB ddough receipe with around a 65% hydration.
I am about to do another large pizza and then bread cookup next week end and plan on putting some hickory chips onto the coals and putting some smoke into the oven for extra flavour.
How do you prepare your oven and fire for pizza cooking?
What wood do you use for the heating your oven?
What temperature do you get your oven to when cooking your pizzas?
which leads to the next question,
What time does it take to cook your pizzas?
Also, do you make your own dough or use commercially made dough?
What is the hydration percentage of your dough? (needs to be higher for wood fired ovens than for the domestic oven).
All of the questions, I feel will provide a differnce in your pizza and its final flavour.

Neill

[Ramiro]

Re: I can't get the taste of wood fired cooking

Thank You for your reply nissanneilly !

[Ramiro]

Re: I can't get the taste of wood fired cooking

Hi Neil:

3 days ago I cooked pizzas again in my brick oven. The flavor was good but I still don't taste any difference in the flavor cooking with the wood fired oven.To tell the truth, I don't know the exact temperature of my oven when I started cooking but many of the bricks turned white, but not all.

I used eucalypt too but I don't know the exact type of eucalypt. There was a big problem this time: There was soooo much smoke that it was really annoying. Maybe the wood wasn't dry enough. When the wood was burning there was not that much smoke, but when there was no flame and only red coals, it was amazing the amount of smoke. It was impossible to controll it. Any tips to solve this problem?

How do you prepare your oven and fire for pizza cooking?
I soaked a piece of old bread in alcohol and put some logs on it.

What wood do you use for the heating your oven?
Eucalypt

What temperature do you get your oven to when cooking your pizzas?
Don't know

which leads to the next question,
What time does it take to cook your pizzas?
About 8 to 9 minutes
Also, do you make your own dough or use commercially made dough?
I make my own dough. I use: flour, fresh yeast, some beer, sugar, salt, butter,water.

What is the hydration percentage of your dough?
I really don't know the percentage, but I think it is a bit higher than the usual 60%, next time I make pizza I will measure the amount of water.

After mixing all the ingredients I let the dough to grow and it grows well, it doubles the size or even more.

Thank you Neil.

Ramiro

[Bacterium]

Re: I can't get the taste of wood fired cooking

Hi Ramiro
8 or 9 minutes sounds too long in my experience.

Is your brick oven dome getting "white hot"......meaning that the soot (black carbon coating inside the dome from the wood) has burnt off?

If you are getting a lot of smoke it suggest something is not right. Usually wood ovens build up heat in the top part of the dome and that helps combust the visible smoke, hence only a small amount of visible smoke should go up the flue once you have some heat in the oven.

Some say smoke is usually unburnt fuel......either by the prescence of too much moisture or not enough heat.

hope this helps.......I'm not specialist tho

[Ramiro]

Re: I can't get the taste of wood fired cooking

Hi Bacterium:

As I said, some bricks turned white, but not all. You are right, for me it also took too long to cook the pizza. I'll try to get dryer wood and cook again, maybe that way I won't got so much smoke.

I guess each brick oven is different from the other, maybe I still need to understand a bit more the personality of my oven.

Thank you!